


Limelight

by typhe



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: LHM, M/M, Pillow Talk, Power Imbalance, Relationship Negotiation, mindspeech
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 01:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typhe/pseuds/typhe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stefen asks Vanyel to read his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limelight

**Author's Note:**

> There is no porn in this but Stef's head is reliably NSFW.

I fumble my way out from under tangled sheets, crawling clumsily over Vanyel's body - his protests are muffled but I think he's objecting to my leaving his side. "Shh, I'm just after some water," I assure him, my legs finally escaping from the chaos. I'm almost getting used to this. It's more believable after sex, when he doesn't hide how much he wants me to touch him and keep touching - maybe it's hard to deny how you feel about someone when you just invited them to fuck the daylights out of you, and my gods does he know how to be inviting.

If I could only find the water - I sweep my hand slowly over the nightstand. Nothing. Further back. Is that - no, it's an empty cup. We probably left the jug by the hearth. I curse quietly, hoping I can find my way there in the pitch dark; the moon is elsewhere tonight, and only the faraway stars observe our passion through the window. It's open far enough that I can feel a slight breeze, but I can't see a damned thing -

There's a flash close to my eyes and I reel away in panic.

"Sorry." I hear Vanyel sitting up, and I gingerly lower my arms from around my head. "Was trying to help - didn't mean to startle you."

I blink furiously in the light, not quite able to look at it. "Well, I was cursing the darkness," I accept, and glance around with adjusted sight. The water-jug mocks me from the far corner of the nightstand. "Thanks," I add awkwardly, pouring a cupful and collecting a pillow that somehow ended up on the floor. I settle back against the headboard, swilling water unsubtly towards the back of my mouth and squinting suspiciously at the peculiar point of light.

"I can dismiss it -"

"No, I don't mind - just wasn't expecting it." It's an odd sort of light; it's as if it has only one flavour, a pure white that makes his pallor seem spectral - it's not like seeing him in warm candlelight, or with the moon shining on his body. Right now, he makes for an incongruously carnal spirit, with sweat-damp hair and sheets clinging about his thighs, and I see a streak of seed drying on his belly and take depraved satisfaction in realising I don't know whose it is. "I _like_ being able to see you," I add, mischief lacing my voice, and I can't tell if he blushes in the monotone light but for a brief moment, it flickers.

Maybe I shouldn't have said that so bawdily, or at all. "Really, Stef, if I look half as much of a mess as I feel," he groans, straightening out a sheet and pulling it demurely up to his chest, and I want to say _oh, much worse_ , in all wickedness, but that would only further my blunder against his nature. No, he couldn't comprehend his own beauty right now - transfigured by sex, radiant with the joyful weariness of it. Imperfect and sated and whole. How could I _not_ want to see him like this?

"You look happy," I try, and he dips his head as if that alone is shame enough.

"Your fault," he grants me. Oh, I know. He shuffles closer, leaning on his left arm - he's recovered much of his strength since the attack, but his right shoulder is still stiff and painful and he's avoiding putting strain on it. We've been creative. (Just as well, given his staggering pent-up appetite). I've had to have a care for where I touch him, which has let me learn how he likes to be touched - I stretch out my arm, and wait for him to fall into its crook so I can pull him gently against me. He rests his head on my chest, and the light-source drifts above us - understandable, not wanting to look directly at it.

"I almost want to touch it," I mutter curiously, setting down my cup.

"By all means, try," he says, and it bobs lower for my convenience. My questing hand passes straight through it - no heat, no resistance, and in the corner of my eye I catch him smiling slightly as I twitch my fingers in empty air. "Magelights are illusory. It's not really there."

"Oh." It drifts away again, rising in a perfect parabola that belies its creator's present inability to raise a finger or form a sentence longer than five words. "I keep forgetting you can _do_ things like this," I admit with some awe.

That earns a definite smile. "I keep forgetting it's not normal to you. I try not to waste power - takes much more time and effort to gather it than to use it -"

"Sounds like money," I muse.

He laughs lightly. "Yes. Not least in that it's how easily one can acquire it that defines how powerful you are. But, helping you would never seem like a waste." I murmur thanks, and stroke his hair away from his brow, a little giddy from the thought that _I am sleeping with a great wizard_. "Stef - honestly now - you know I wouldn't use magic around you other than to help you. I can promise you that."

"I know," I assure him. Why would he even think he has to promise it - ? Well. From what I know of the contours of his personal history, it would make sense if he saw his magic as making him inherently _less_ worthy of a lover's trust.

But I do trust him. Absolutely.

"Good. That's - important to me." He shifts in my arms, and I can sense his thoughts turning serious. "Given what I'm capable of."

"I've seen a bit of what you're capable of," I remind him, and his wounded shoulder twitches.

He sighs against my skin. "In defence of others and of Valdemar, only. Stef, when I first had them, I couldn't feel comfortable with my powers until I realised I could use them to help those who didn't have them."

"Sounds like you," I reply. I'm still learning to understand that commitment, that part of who he is; but lying so close to him, seeing his brow crease in the light he made, I can almost sense an answer lurking in the shadows. _"Given what I'm capable of"_? Without Whites, might he imagine himself, his powers, as some sort of monstrous extra appendage, functionally useless and horrifying for others to behold? An unsheathed weapon. I know a lot of people are scared of him. There's so many stories about him killing evil mages - he's even told me some of them himself, always with disgust. He must know a lot about the potential of magical power to corrupt. As much as Valdemar needs him, perhaps he needs Valdemar to keep his peace with himself.

And he needs me. I know it. I'm sure of it. He needs someone's faith and he's got mine.

"I'd never really be afraid of you." I feel silly saying this to him given how we spent our last few hours, but maybe he needs to hear it. "No matter if you can do things I can't. I know you'd not hurt me."

"I swear," he assures me again. "That goes for all my Mind-Gifts too - I might use them to aid or defend you, but not for anything else. No Herald would ever trespass among your thoughts or feelings. Having the power doesn't make it right to use it. I wouldn't ever spy on you, or read your mind if you hadn't asked me to."

"What if I did ask you to?"

His eyes widen, irises thin and almost colourless in the peculiar light. Did I go too far again? It was only a whimsy, a daydream about romancing a Herald. Maybe there's a reason they tend to keep to their own - does he even want that kind of intimacy with me?

"If you don't want to read my mind, that's alright," I add hurriedly, "I mean, it's not like I could return the favour -"

"I want to," he says. "If you're sure you want me to."

"Of course I'm sure. I trust you." _And if I can make you see how I feel about you...if I can show you what you mean to me..._

"Then I'd be honoured." He pauses, and lifts his head up onto the pillows beside mine, and he cups both his hands around my face lightly. "This might feel strange. Tell me if you want me to stop." I smile at him, reminded inanely of the time I first asked a man to penetrate me - a whimsy as curious and driven as this one, though the man I was with was throwaway, forgettable. _He wasn't you._

Vanyel doesn't take his eyes off me, and they lose focus in the pale light, an expression I've seen before; not looking, but listening.

It takes me a moment to realise something's changed - he really _could_ do this without my noticing if he wanted to. Silk-soft contact - it's hard to discern, a layer of paper between the physical touch and our lifebond, paper with _words_ impressed on it - _:Hello, ke'chara.:_

I can't respond. I try to _think words_ at him, at that soft weave of him amid my thoughts, but I don't _have_ anything to join to it. Hello? Van? Great gods, this is strange. I kind of imagined it would be like the lifebond, but more so, which was stupid, as the lifebond is not at all like I had ever imagined it would be like. This is, it's like the light which is _just_ a light, not a flame or a heavenly body, only illumination without cause; this is, in itself, _just_ words, an imprint of a thought, and my sense of the rest of him is elsewhere, deep and inherent. 

Surely I should be thinking at him in great profundities but my mind's still snagged on that night years ago - _a_ first time, not _the_ , when I was bored enough with myself to cast aside yet another small piece of my whittled innocence. Why would I ever be thinking of a former lover right now? Van must think me very crass - _:No,_ : he hushes my botherment, and his tone seems to jangle with what I only hope is amusement, tickling over my disarrayed thoughts. _:I can see the connexion.:_

Well. Good. Do mindspeakers learn to be forgiving about such sublimely inappropriate diversions? Oh gods, maybe that's why he doesn't share his mind with his lovers - was I really just remembering another man when I'd barely cleaned the taste of him from my mouth? What other offensive thoughts should I not be indulging right now? Havens, I shouldn't have asked myself that -

"Stef," and it's somehow strange that he's whispered my name aloud. "Do you need me to stop?"

Please, no. Unless you want to stop. Unless I really am that innerly revolting - another flicker of memory; Medren frantically tidying our room and begging me to leave because he'd asked a girl over. That's me right now. Or I'm that. And Vanyel is definitely amused, even as I'm remembering the part where my roommate threw me out - do I have _any_ thoughts I look decent in? Where are all my scintillating reflections on music and literature? Any half-finished compositions that aren't completely awful? Anything I've never said that's not deservedly private - ?

_:Are you sure you're alright?:_

I think so? I'm almost done with wanting to shake my head around and find where his voice is coming from. It really _is_ as absurd as that night I spent in a garrett of, I don't even remember, the first inn we stumbled into that was cheap enough that Sho and I could afford to split a room - the publican knew damn well why we were there, least as soon as we turned down an equally cheap whore - why am I even skimming these grisly details? This is _more_ absurd than that juvenile fumble. I feel less of, of a participant, now - should that sting so much? I really want this. I want to be together, I won't ever tell him to stop. And is it such a big deal, if I can't speak back? Gods know I've had one-sided sex before - never cared - but it's _you_ and we couldn't do that - and I try, I'm trying to say _I love you_ but it's not _there_ against his words, it's just lost in the lifebond like every other time I said it without saying it -

"How do you _deal with_ this?" I protest, and he's gone. Like he was never there. It's like I'm flailing at the light again. My thoughts are alone, singing at nothing.

"Shielding," he replies evenly. "And a lot of respect for people's privacy. There's protocols involved - it gets instinctive, how you signal to someone and how you converse with them without picking up anything you shouldn't, or leaving any of your own thoughts in among theirs. But it takes a lot of training. When my Gifts awakened, I had a hard time _not_ hearing things - it was unpleasant for everyone involved."

"I can imagine." 

He's sinking back into his pillows, and his remembered discomfort is thrumming inside me like a drawn-out minor chord, calling for me to set my fingers atop it to hush it. I can see now that I've had weeks, maybe months, to get used to being lifebonded - I just never knew _why_ I understood his moods so well, why I was so compelled to endure and repair them. "Mindspeech breeds tolerance, though," he continues. "It's all very well to show propriety about what you speak of, but you can hardly fault someone for an inadvertently rude _thought_. And as I said, you learn what to hear and what not to hear - Mindspeakers shield each other out of private thoughts as they converse, but some of us are strong enough to hear right through a shield if we wanted to. I'm one of the stronger ones," he specifies with his typical modesty. "So whenever I relax my own personal mindshields, I have to take care what not to hear."

None of that can make intimacy easy. Especially not with a reprobate like me. I wish I hadn't ruined things, though - "Van, I, I'm sorry I hashed that up. I - sort of panicked, realising you were - looking at me. It wasn't that I didn't like it. I did like it. Feeling you talk to my mind," and I sigh again at the unfairness of it all. Life isn't fair. I don't do fair - do I look like someone who could win in a fair fight? I have won many fights.

Love sure as hells isn't fair. He reaches for me, stroking my face gently as if I was the one who deserved comfort and apology, as if I wasn't the one who could only ever let him down. Damnitall, I wasn't expecting a _fair_ relationship with someone who can throw fire at people. What I want is whatever relationship we can really _have_. 

"Stef," he says quietly. "You didn't ruin anything. I'm frankly glad you recognised that a powerful Mind-Gift isn't something to be cavalier about. It can easily be used as a weapon." He sounds gloomy, and I remember my silly fantasy about how it would feel to make love with a man who could read my thoughts. Can he feel my blush against his hand? "I'll admit, Mindspeech is a Gift I like having. I've some pity for Heralds who can't Mindspeak with their Companions - I imagine they miss out on a lot of what the bond means for those of us who do have the Gift. Their Companions _could_ Mindspeak to them, but I'm sure you can see why most people find non-mutual Mindspeech bonds unpleasant. And apart from talking to 'Fandes and other beings with whom I couldn't otherwise communicate, and saving a lot of time in extremis - it's also useful for saying things I couldn't say out loud."

If I knew him any less thoroughly, I might have missed the tremor in his words.

Lately my silly fantasies have tended to pursue my more prudent thoughts doggedly, ofttimes to run them down and tear them apart. This isn't the first time he's encouraged them while seeming not to. "Stage fright," I declare. "I overreacted at nothing. It was unexpected and I wasn't sure what to do. Would you try again, maybe?"

He smiles slightly, and his hand brushes down to my throat, my bare shoulders. "If you insist."

And he's there again. As suddenly as he made light - and now I _know_ he's there, what that means, no amount of his tiptoeing subtlety can hide his presence from me. As thin as words, as the dark edge of his silver eyes, and the surprise of it _is_ much like those early experiments with being on the receiving end of sex; I'm incredulous that he's _in there_. A geometric mystery - his mind is much more extensive than mine, so how does it _fit_? All mine has going for it, I'd venture, is a finer echo - I will allow myself to be vain about that.

But at least this time I'm going to _try to think_ instead of milling around in panic. He's there. Is that so unsettling, just because I don't understand it? Just because I have to accept that parts of him will be always beyond my conceptual reach? It's unfair, that's fine, I still love you, I love you, can you tell? It's the discreteness of the contact that's so baffling - that's exactly how it _isn't_ like being lifebonded. This touch is only thought. I couldn't number and define the levels of our lifebond - the sense I have of his energy, his inner landscape, the place of his body whenever I reach out in the dark, the things his words mean, the heart he never could hide from me. What's the difference between thought and emotion? Is there some line between the two that matters only to the Gifted? I wish I knew what he was seeing - 

_:You.:_

It's only a word but it rings lovingly, and with a deep knowing.

His hand moves down over my back, and he gathers me close in his arms. _:You know how you never cross the same river twice? I watch thoughts flow through you. I see them split around obstacles, I can guess the shape of the earth underneath...:_ I feel him smiling, lips against my brow. _:If you must know, your mind flows faster than most. And it's...:_

The next message isn't a word; it's something more disparate, and the sense I get is of something like a kaleidoscope of time, turning moments reflecting in striking patterns. Oh? Flattered, I guess. So that's the kind of thing he couldn't say aloud?

 _:Things there aren't words for - yes. Things that are easier to say with my mind.:_ He shifts against me, and his lips find mine, firm and insistent. _:I love you,:_ and he means so much more.


End file.
